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Humeanism is a doctrine about practical reasons. It says that all practical reasons involve desires. According to this doctrine, beliefs alone cannot be practical reasons, i.e. they cannot by themselves be reasons for doing something, for wanting to do something, or for wanting something to happen. If, for example, you did not want to stay healthy, then your belief that exercising would improve your health could not by itself be a reason to exercise. Humeanism thus echoes Hume's famous slogan that reason, conceived as the belief-producing faculty, is and ought only to be the slave of the passions: what we believe cannot alone determine what we rationally should do, should want to do, or should simply want to happen. Beliefs guide our actions towards goals that belief itself is not capable of rationally setting for us. But—and at this point Humeanism might be seen to depart from the position held by David Hume himself—our actions and desires do have to answer standards of rationality. So according to Humeanism, though maybe not according to Hume, there is a genuine notion of practical reason.¹ This faculty of practical reason determines what we rationally should do or desire. A theory of practical reasons tells us what sort of considerations are to be taken into account when we determine what is practically rational. According to Humeanism, practical reasons involve desires. Desires or, to use Hume's term, passions, are thus rationally controlled by other passions.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-5720-9_13

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